Since the breakup of the Soviet Union, the North Caucasus is known as a politically unstable region and as a melting … and extortion. Furthermore, the North Caucasus is one of Russia's poorest and least developed regions. Although the role …'s past and current development. The paper considers specific influencing factors like the North Caucasus' geographical …

, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan), South Caucasus (Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Georgia), and Western CIS (Belarus, Moldova …